A Visual Reading Guide RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA Racial Violence After the Civil War 1865-1876 1860 1865 1870 1875 1 · Better understand the history of violent How to use this Guide resistance to Black equality in this country, EJI’s Reconstruction in America report provides Reject the false myths of Black inferiority context and analysis for a dark period in American · and dangerousness that were used to justify history, one that has been erased from public that resistance, and memory and that may be difficult to process. This visual reading guide is designed to help Identify the ways that public and private CONTENTS readers engage with the report. It aims to prompt · actors expressed their belief in white meaningful reflection and discussion about the supremacy and sought to embed that missed opportunity of Reconstruction and how ideology in local, state, and federal laws. the violent rejection of Black equality set the stage for generations of terror and inequality In addition to this guide, on EJI’s website you in the South and throughout the country. can find a data visualization map showing the spread of racial violence during Reconstruction The guide is divided into seven sections, each and a video animation of the Reconstruction in INTRODUCTION 2 including discussion questions, summaries of America report. key information, and a timeline of events. While reading, reflect on the discussion questions for JOURNEY TO FREEDOM 4 that chapter of the report. After reading, use the Learn More Emancipation and Citizenship information and timeline in this guide to review what you have learned. Then, you should be The Reconstruction in America report is one able to meaningfully discuss the guided reading in a series of EJI reports about the history FREEDOM TO FEAR 8 questions, in conversation with others or through and legacies of racial injustice in the United A Terrifying and Deadly Backlash self-reflection. States. If the discussions that emerge from this guide leave you with more questions about It is our hope that through conversations about this history and its legacies, please consider DOCUMENTING RECONSTRUCTION 12 racial terrorism, the complicity of public officials visiting eji.org/reports to read the other reports and law enforcement, and the false myth of racial in the series. VIOLENCE hierarchy, readers will: Known and Unknown Horrors THE DANGER OF FREEDOM 16 White people trafficked first Africans to the RECONSTRUCTION’S END 20 Americas through the Transatlantic Slave Trade A TRUTH THAT NEEDS TELLING 24 1619 1590 1600 1610 1620 INTRODUCTION 3 Guided Reading Questions: Consider the following questions as you read the Introduction. Come back to them after reading. · What similarities do you notice between the desires of newly emancipated people during Reconstruction and the desires of Black Americans today? What similarities or differences do you INTRODUCTION notice in the response to those desires in your local community, your state, and the nation? Definitions recreation that followed the Civil War. Black disenfrachisement During the 12-year period of Reconstruction, During Reconstruction, the federal This is the practice of preventing Black 80% government provided oversight to enforce people from exercising their constitutional Black people’s new rights of freedom and at least 2,000 Black women, men, and children were The percentage of eligible Black voters right to vote. Throughout Reconstruction, citizenship and to establish new state victims of racial terror lynchings. who were registered to vote by 1868. intimidation, violence, and lawlessness governments. were used to keep Black people from Emancipation vs. equality voting, to murder Black elected officials, United States Supreme Court During Reconstruction, white people and to overthrow duly elected public During Reconstruction, the Supreme used violent resistance to ensure that officials who supported Black equality. Court used its power to stop Congress emancipation—the end of many Black Our collective ignorance of what happened from protecting Black people’s rights. people’s status as enslaved—did not Racial hierarchy By blocking Congress’ efforts, the Court immediately after the Civil War has contributed to result in equality—equal access to the This is a belief system that white people allowed the same white Southerners who misinformed stereotypes and misguided false rights of citizens. are inherently superior to Black people had fought the Civil War to keep Black and all people of color. It is myth that narratives about who is honorable and who is 1865-1876 people enslaved to maintain control of was created to justify the kidnap, human state and local governments. not and has allowed bigotry and a legacy of racial This is the period of Reconstruction, trafficking, and enslavement of Africans. the period of legal, political, and social injustice to persist. 1630 1640 1650 1660 1670 1680 1690 1700 1710 JOURNEY TO FREEDOM 5 Guided Reading Questions: Consider the following questions as you read the section Journey to Freedom. Come back to them after reading. JOURNEY · What did enslaved Black people hope a Union victory would TO FREEDOM mean for their lives? · After the Confederate surrender, a newspaper editorial wrote Emancipation and Citizenship that, “Slavery is dead. The Negro is not; there is our misfortune.” In what ways does this section help you understand why ending enslavement did not end the devastating effects of racial hierarchy for Black people? Not a single Southern legislature believed free Negro labor was possible without a system of “ them to be exploited economically through Carolina seceded, its state legislators restrictions that took all its freedoms away; there Definitions violent means. In the United States, a child wrote that a primary catalyst for their was scarcely a white man in the South who did not Transatlantic Slave Trade born to an enslaved Black person was action was “[a]n increasing hostility on the automatically declared to be enslaved. This part of the non-slaveholding States to the The Transatlantic Slave Trade was the honestly regard Emancipation as a crime, and its custom created a racial hierarchy that was institution of slavery.” The secession of human trafficking of Africans from the hereditary and permanent. these 11 states began the Civil War. practical nullification as a duty. continent of Africa to North America, South America, or Central America. Domestic Slave Trade Emancipation Proclamation —Sociologist W.E.B. DuBois Over 10 million African men, women, and children were kidnapped and sold The Domestic Slave Trade emerged after Issued by President Abraham Lincoln into captivity through this trade, and an the Transatlantic Slave Trade was legally in September 1862, the Emancipation additional 2 million African men, women, banned in 1808 to meet the ongoing Proclamation declared the freedom of and children died during the brutal demand for enslaved Black people. Millions Black people enslaved in the Confederacy. voyage. This trade ended in 1808, but of Black people, including free Black people It did not free enslaved people in the Many of the day’s most pressing questions asked: the enslavement of Black people in the who were illegally sold into captivity, were border states of Maryland, West Virginia, what would happen to the entrenched institution United States did not end. It grew. trafficked through the Domestic Slave Trade. Kentucky, and Missouri and exempted Tennessee and parts of Virginia and of slavery? And what fate would befall the millions Chattel slavery Secession Louisiana. People across the country— of Black people who had been enslaved at the A unique system of enslavement that Beginning with South Carolina, 11 Southern in the South and the North—protested permanently took away legal rights and states left the United States because they the Order. war’s start? autonomy from the enslaved and allowed wanted to maintain slavery. When South 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790 6 RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA JOURNEY TO FREEDOM 7 13th Amendment 15th Amendment People Red dates identify an The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, The 15th Amendment prohibits racial TIMELINE | 1619–1870 act of racial violence except as punishment for a crime. It passed discrimination in voting, granting voting Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe both houses of Congress by January rights to men of all races. It became part A white abolitionist who, like many white MARCH 10, Confederate soldiers hanged Amy Spain, 1865, but could not become part of the of the Constitution in February 1870. people who supported a legal end to 1619 White people trafficked first Africans to a Black woman, for helping the Union Army Constitution until 75% of the states voted slavery, did not believe in racial equality and the Americas through the Transatlantic 1865 for it, including the states in the South who 25% believed that Black people were naturally Slave Trade were fighting a war to maintain slavery. It The percentage of delegates to state inferior to white people. In his efforts to draw APRIL 9, Confederate Army surrenders and the was ratified in December 1865 after federal constitutional conventions in the former support for ending slavery, he argued that 1808 Transatlantic Slave Trade becomes illegal 1865 Civil War ends laws required former Confederate states Confederate states who were Black men. without slavery Black people would die out. but Domestic Slave Trade remains lawful to adopt the 13th Amendment in order to Eligible to participate in politics for the first and very profitable for white people DECEMBER 13th Amendment is added to the officially rejoin the country. time in the country’s history, Black men Stephen A. Hale throughout the country 1865 Constitution were the majority of delegates in South A proslavery public official in Alabama, Civil Rights Act of 1866 Carolina, more than half in Louisiana, and Hale wrote to the governor in 1860 warning 11 southern states secede from the Union President Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil This federal law declared that Black more than a third in Florida.